Jan Neethling
Jan Neethling
Jan Neethling
Edited by Heidi Erdmann
Contents
07Introduction
Heidi Erdmann
11 Chapter One
Of Villains and Rogues,
Maidens and Goddesses
Karin Skawran
45 Chapter Two
Young Men in Garage Trousers
Wilhelm van Rensburg
55 Chapter Three
Disarmingly Honest Observer Neil Dundas
71 Exhibitions List
77Acknowledgements
81
Directory
Introduction
Two friends are driving from Johannesburg to Cape Town.
One likes to drive, and the other is happiest as a passenger. It is a long
journey, at least fourteen hours; lots of time to talk, listen to music, discuss
plans. Once in Cape Town there are friends to visit, two exhibitions to
install, two exhibition openings to attend and an important birthday party.
The two friends are the artists Jan Neethling and Robert Hodgins. The two
exhibitions are Neethling’s debut solo, Uncle Six Fingers, and unbeknown
to them at that stage, Hodgins’ last solo exhibition in Cape Town. The
birthday bash is Neethling’s seventieth, and Hodgins was throwing the
party. It was November 2008.
Their journey went according to plan as far as Colesberg.
That was where Jan’s trusted old Opel ran out of steam, literally. They
waited a day or two in the hope of a repair, but eventually continued the
journey with a hired car. The delay played havoc with their social calendar
but not with their official business. When Jan arrived in Cape Town his
exhibition was fully installed and nearly sold out. He was pleased with the
installation and, in his modest way, somewhat surprised by the sales. Rob
was walking a few steps behind Jan; he was preoccupied with having to
navigate the steps leading down into the exhibition space. Once in the
room he looked up and saw the red stickers.
I cannot remember his exact words. He was obviously pleased for Jan’s
success, but simultaneously scolded him. He said something like: “Jan,
you could have done this twenty years ago!” And that was the truth Neethling did not have to wait until 2008 to present this first solo exhibition.
He is an accomplished artist, inspired by innovation, and who - throughout
a long career - refused to subscribe to any form of institutionalization.
In March 2013 Neethling was in Cape Town again, this time for the
opening of his solo exhibition, A Greek Goddess up to no Good. The
collector’s base for his work had increased and there was a demand for
more information on his life and work. It was at this time that we discussed
and developed the broad strokes that eventually became this book. Jan
jokingly refers to himself as an emerging talent because he had his first solo
exhibition at the age of seventy.
Since that exhibition in 2008 his career has taken off for a second time.
The demand for his participation in group and solo exhibitions far exceed
his capacity to produce the work. The success brought a second round of
followers and collectors of his work, but it also pointed to a fracture in
his career. There are two distinctly separate chapters, the early years and
also sharpened his ability to recognize precisely the difference between the
the present. The essays and images in this book are an attempt to fill in
two artists’ styles. His contribution is a personal insight written with the
those gaps and take the reader on a long creative journey spanning fifty
deep intimacy of a long friendship.
five years.
This book finally brings together the story of Jan’s long and exciting career,
I am indebted to Karin Skawran who, over a period of three months,
and illustrates his multi-talented ability. It is the celebration of an artist who
invited Jan to her home for regular weekly conversations. Her resulting
is not afraid, of someone who does not hold back.
interview provides the reader with an insightful introduction to his life. Karin
I want to thank each of the contributors for their input, as well as everyone
has known Jan since the 1960’s and in her professional capacity had
who assisted in the process of making this book the reality it has become.
secured his work for an academic collection in 1975. She was the perfect
taskmaster, probing and questioning the artist about his working processes
Finally, I am deeply indebted to Jan Neethling for having trusted me with
and urging him not only to remember, but to match those memories with
this project. It remains a huge honour and pleasure to be a part of his life
illustrations of his earliest works. This was a challenge as Jan did not
and career.
have much in terms of an archive of his work. Friends, family members,
colleagues, collectors and galleries were called upon, and as this material
started coming in the book took on its final shape.
Neethling’s printmaking and particularly his collaborations with Hodgins is
one aspect of his career that is well documented. The Wits Art Museum
publication, A lasting Impression: The Robert Hodgins print Archive,
published in 2012, references many of these collaborations. Jan and Rob’s
printmaking innovations and experimentations with cliché verre, at a time
when very few artists in South Africa were working in the medium, remain
unrivaled. Wilhelm van Rensburg, who has worked closely with Jan and
Rob over the past decade, expertly shares his insights into this aspect of
his career.
Neethling and Hodgins had been friends since the late 1950’s, when they
met at art school - Hodgins as the lecturer and Neethling his student. A
friendship started that spanned several decades. For the last sixteen years
of Rob’s life, his studio was based at Jan’s Midrand home. Spending such
a period of time in each other’s proximity, but with Neethling the more
reserved of the two, inevitably lead to the perception that Neethling’s work
was heavily influenced, even derivative of the Hodgins palette. This is a
misconception that needs to be dispelled, and who better to do it than an
undisputed Hodgins expert. The Goodman Gallery’s Senior Curator, Neil
Dundas, had enjoyed a close working relationship with Hodgins from the
1980’s until his death in 2010. His visits to Rob’s studio not only introduced
him to Neethling, but gave him a privileged insider’s view into how he
developed his work, and how Neethling and Hodgins collaborated, inspired
and motivated each other. Dundas’ profound knowledge of Hodgins’ work
Chapter One
Of Villains and Rogues,
Maidens and Goddesses
Karin Skawran
Karin Skawran in conversation
with Jan Neethling about his life
and his art.
Jan Neethling has, over the years, made a name for himself as a distinguished artist.
For some fifty years he has creatively collaborated with one of South Africa’s foremost
artists, Robert Hodgins. Until recently, Jan was little known outside Johannesburg.
This, I believe, was partly due to his own modest and introvert nature, as well as to the
generous attitude with which he unconditionally welcomed and supported each and
every success Robert Hodgins achieved with his art. There is no doubt, however, that
from the moment they met, Robert became Jan’s mentor and muse.
Due to his retiring nature perhaps, Jan has hardly kept any documentary evidence
of his own exhibitions and artistic achievements. This was one of the reasons why
his last solo exhibition at Erdmann Contemporary in Cape Town in 2013, lead to
Heid Erdmann’s decision to produce a book on Jan Neethling’s work and to get to
know him better as a painter, graphic artist and sculptor, and to try and fill in some
of the many existing gaps in his artistic career. In my informal conversation with Jan
Neethling, the artist has been challenged to talk about his life and his art. For about
three months Jan and I met at my house every Friday morning to talk about his work,
Surrounded by images of his work we also shared memories of our beloved friend,
Robert Hodgins, who played such a significant part in Jan’s life and art.
Although Jan remembers very little about his first attempts to create art, we started
our conversation by talking about the earliest phases of his art-making.
Karin
Jan, what do you remember of your first attempts at making art and being interested
in art?
Jan
When I was five years old, in 1944, I accompanied my parents to Canada, where my
father was a diplomat. Although this can hardly be defined as art, I recall drawing
an Easter bunny with crayons one day. My father proudly pinned the drawing to the
wall. This impressed me enormously! I further remember using a lot of green in my
drawings at the time, because the Canadian summer, compared with the mostly dry
and ochre African landscape, was very green. I recall drawing bright green lawns,
trees and leaves.
Karin
Interestingly, such saturated emerald greens appear in your work to this day. I am
thinking of Nude Walking through Landscape (2013), for instance, and Moon Bathing
(2009). A phosphorescent green occurs particularly in several of your Calendar Girls
series of 2009.
Yes, coming to think of it, green does play an important part in my life and in my art. I
live on a plot surrounded by greens, and I tend to my Bonsai collection daily – nature
with its different shades of green has always appealed to me.
Jan I have, however, always loved bright and luminous colours. For this reason I am
inspired by artists like van Gogh, and Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Tom
Wesselmann, Andy Warhol and Richard Lindner. My passion for colour has, as you
have noticed, been strongly expressed in the Calendar Girls (2009) series and in my
still lives, such as Red Table (2001) and Flowers and Fruit (2006).
Karin What was your earliest art training at school like?
Jan I have hardly any recollection of these early years. Our family returned to South Africa
in 1948 and we bought a house in Waterkloof, Pretoria. I was registered at Waterkloof
House Preparatory School in 1949 and started art classes there in what was then
known as Standard 2. I remember achieving top marks for art throughout. We mostly
had to paint figures in domestic and sport settings.
I left prep school in 1952 and then went to Pretoria Boys High, where I followed
art classes under the well known artist, Larry Scully. I do, however, not recall much
from this period, and was certainly not influenced by Scully at all. I struggled with
Mathematics, and did not complete Matric. My father realised that my interest and my
talents lay with art, and so he agreed to let me register at the Art School of the Pretoria
Technical College in 1958.
In the few examples you could dig up from this early period, for instance, Sitting Figure
(1958/1960) and another figurative oil painting from this period, you have already made
use of the strong colours you have mentioned before, and have emphasised the bodily
forms of your figures with expressive dark, sometimes luminously colourful outlines.
These are still characteristic of your work, and may have been inspired by the French
Expressionist, Rouault, and certainly by Robert Hodgins’ early work.
Karin But before we talk in greater depth about your work, tell me when and how did your
friendship with Robert Hodgins develop?
Jan During my second year at Art School Robert was staying in a flat in Church Street in
Pretoria. Together with three or four other students we used to go for tea with Rob
and talk about art and literature. Later there were parties and we went on outings with
him to Johannesburg. This is when I met, amongst other, Guiseppe Cattaneo and
Edoardo Villa.
Karin When did you leave the Art School?
Jan I left the Art School at the end of 1960, when I had completed the three year Diploma
course. I stayed in contact with Rob, who left the College a year later and worked
as a journalist, critic and sub-editor for Newscheck from 1962 until 1966. He was
then appointed lecturer in painting at the Department of Art at the University of the
Witwatersrand. Here he worked until 1983.
In 1961 I was thrilled to find employment at the first Advertising Agency I applied at
for a job. This was at Van Zyl, Schultz, Forsyth and Tredoux in Johannesburg, where
I worked until 1962. With a brief interruption in 1964 when I went to America for three
months, I worked at advertising agencies until about 1965. Since then I have been a
full-time painter.
Karin That must have been an exciting time art-wise, because during the sixties, as far as I
can remember, there was a whole generation of excellent art teachers and artists at
this Art School whom you must have met?
Jan Oh yes, there was, of course Robert Hodgins, who had been a lecturer in painting
at the College since 1954. We only met in 1959, during my second year at the Art
School. He was not around when I entered the School, but, during his sabbatical year,
was looking after the Stevenson Hamilton farm in White River, Mpumalanga.1
Other lecturers at the College were; Zakkie Eloff who taught life drawing, Leo Theron
was responsible for anatomy and portraiture, Maxie Steytler taught textile design,
Johan van Heerden - sculpture, and Peter Eliastam and Ernest de Jongh - commercial
design. I was at the time, thinking of following a career as commercial designer. I also
took some classes in photography and ceramics.2 The two lecturers who inspired
me most were Zakkie Eloff and Robert Hodgins. I admired Zakkie Eloff’s portraits and
learnt a lot from him, although I remember little of what I painted then.
Stevenson Hamilton was the first warden of South Africa’s Sabi Nature Reserve, which later became
the Kruger National Park. He served in the Reserve from 1902-1946
1
2
Together with Robert Hodgins, Jan Neethling worked for a while at the ceramic studio of Retief van Wyk in Pretoria.
Karin 1965 is about the time we met?
Jan
Yes, you, Rob and I met at the late Carl Rappe’s house in Waterkloof in Pretoria. He
was a diplomat at the Swedish Embassy and later became the Swedish Ambassador
to South Africa. Carl owned several of Rob’s works and he was a great lover of music.
The evening we met – I recall - he had organised a musical soireé in his garden.
Karin
When Rob lived in Brooklyn with your brother Timothy and his family, he used to visit
me almost weekly and we read poetry together. I baked my famous Apfelstrudel,
which he loved, and then we took turns to read to each other poems by Rainer Maria
Rilke, George Seferis, Yanni Ritsos, C.P. Cavafy, Nikos Katzantzakis, W.H. Auden and
many others. Rob was my fiercest and most respected critic and scrutinised most of
my articles before they were published.
Jan The three of us also had a lot of fun! I recall an end-of-year party that you organised for
your Art Department at my house in President Park one year. Everyone had to attend
the party as their favourite art work –you came as the Byzantine Empress Theodora,
a mosaic from the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. Your tall and slim colleague,
Clinton Harrop-Allin, was a natural Giacometti: There was a Toulouse Lautrec, Ivor
Powell arrived as a Duchamp or a Dali, I think, and Keith Dietrich and his wife as
Duane Hanson’s Tourists (1970), there was also a Frida Kahlo, and several others.
Rob, of course, decided to disappear every hour or so, to emerge again as yet another
art work! We celebrated until the early hours of the morning!
Karin When did you move to the smallholding your father bought?
Jan This was in 1966 when my father bought this smallholding near Fourways. He asked
me to live there and improve it, so that he could sell it again. I asked Rob to come and
live with me on the farm. This was from about 1967 to 1968.
When my father sold the smallholding, Rob bought his house in Westdene in
Johannesburg. I moved in with him for about a year in 1972, while my own house was
being built in President Park in Midrand. The well-known artist, Keith Dietrich, was our
neighbour at the time.
Karin Jan, your life is very versatile. You always have much to do on your smallholding, with
your Bonsai collection, and then, of course, your art. How do you manage to structure
your life around all these activities? And how do your interests in music, for instance,
and your love for your Bonsai collection, impact on your art? Or are these two entirely
separate worlds?
Jan They really are two entirely separate worlds, even though my love for music, for
instance, may, subconsciously, have influenced my work here and there. I have only
once consciously produced a work that was inspired by a Bonsai. This was done in
the cliché verre technique.
Karin Now tell me more about your art making. I am curious to know how you conceive an
image in your mind and how you develop it.
Jan Most of the images I paint are inspired by my own photographs, newspaper images
and the work of some European artists, especially Goya, Daumier, van Gogh,
Toulouse Lautrec, Picasso, Cezanne, Renoir, Degas and, as I have pointed out
before, by several Pop artists. I have not been consciously inspired by South African
art at all, except perhaps by Pieter Wenning’s landscapes, which I love. One of my
favourite themes is of nude figures walking through landscapes, which at times faintly
resembles Wenning’s.
Nude and Arcade 1972
Untitled 1978
R.G.H. 4
2007
Red Table 2001
Woman Turning 1970
Man Walking Side 1970
Nude 2004
Jan I always need some reference or source to inspire me. The politicians and drug lords,
businessmen, rogues and villains, have usually been sourced from magazine and
newspaper clippings. As such, the subject matter is unintentionally most of the time,
topical and of immediate interest. I rarely depict a specific scene or a specific person.
Hodgins’ Opening at Goodman (Ulrich and David) (2013) and R.G.H. 4 (2007) are
exceptions.
Karin Your nudes, at times still seem to echo Art School life drawing classes, although
most of them are inspired by magazine images and pin-up calendars. And, although
much more bold and sensuous, they also reflect the influence of Degas and, to some
extent, Renoir.
Like Degas, you like to give the suggestion of accidental, spontaneous and unplanned
compositions, even to the extent of cutting off parts of figures and using unfamiliar
viewpoints. Yet it is clear that, like Degas, you compose your images very carefully.
Interestingly, Degas was influenced by the new techniques of photography and
attempted to convey the impression of movement – both features which have
characterised your work throughout. Images like Life Class (2006) and Nude Lounging
(2009), embody qualities of both Degas and Renoir. Nude (2004), rendered in
saturated bright, almost phosphorescent colours, has something of the poetic quality
of a Renoir.
The girlie calendar series, however, refers directly back to POP art - Tom Wesselmann,
Richard Lindner and others who, in reaction to Abstract Expressionism, returned to
figural imagery. Thematically based on mass-produced culture, such as movies and
advertisements, their involvement with the most brazen characteristics of our culture,
comic strips, highway signs, etc. fascinated me.
Your girlie images and nudes are, not as harsh and hard-edged as those of
Wesselmann and Lindner, for instance. Disco Dancer (2009) and Nudes Roller Skating
(2008) are much more painterly and poetic.
Jan I must emphasise that I never just copy a reference, but change the original image
radically by transforming, abstracting and distorting it.
In order to anchor the image, I start by drawing an outline with pencil or pastel on
canvas or board. Depending on the contents of the image I have in mind, I then make
use of different methods to achieve what I would call, an expressionist figurative
outcome. I chop and change, undo and redo, obliterate areas of the image – each
work is determined by its own process. In Woman Turning (1970) and Woman
Climbing into and out of a Hammock (1970), both exhibited at the Lidchi Gallery in
1971, the white areas in the image were obtained by sandpapering through the upper
layers of paint to the white paint underneath. Robert Hodgins, with whom I exhibited at
the time, and I, used oil glazes on these images, achieving a particular luminosity.
3
England-based graffiti artist, political activist, film director and painter.
Rob and I very often shared processes and techniques we used in order to achieve
different end results. Sometimes I would work into blank areas with pastel, acrylic
paint or spray paint. Or I might build up an image by dabbing paint onto paper, canvas
Jan or board. In Lady Gaga (2013) I first sponged in the body with black acrylic paint,
and at a later stage, stencilled and sprayed in with black the head and umbrella. This
technique was inspired by the work of the street artist, Banksy 3. Finally I painted in the
coloured areas. At times I continued to work into an image or obscure it entirely.
I change appearances quite drastically, by playing with the format and the
composition. In Metamorphosis (2007), the walking figure is serialised in a landscape,
changing colour and position - thereby emphasising forward movement - an element
which has remained characteristic in my work. Or I create floating heads which are
detached from the body, as in Swimsuit Girl with floating Head (2013) and Two Nudes
with floating Heads (2013). In the latter image the heads of the two nudes have been
detached from their bodies by distinctly isolating them in separate frames. Despite the
fact that they belong to the bodies, they almost appear like separate portraits or icons,
hovering above their equally framed bodies. Heads and bodies have been treated
differently – the heads are painted, while both bodies were sponged in with dabs of
black paint. The partly visible figure on the right was added later as a reflection of the
figure on the left.
I cannot explain my compositions – they simply evolve, perhaps though the notion
of floating heads has some significance. I am not quite sure, but they could refer
to the mindlessness or absent-mindedness of politicians. And where they occur in
the girlie images, such as Swimsuit girl with floating Head (2013), they might evoke
flightiness and dumbness. But none of these interpretations were my original intention.
For me they have to do with the excitement of a new dimension and an unexpected
irrationality.
Karin When I bought Nude and Arcades (1972) at the Goodman Gallery for the UNISA
Art Collection, I was impressed with its direct and monumental impact. I was also
fascinated by the unorthodox manner in which you presented the nude body. Its torso,
without head or legs, is portrayed horizontally across the format on a frontal plane.
In this and most of your other works, you have broken with the traditional Western
perspective according to which the onlooker is gradually led - formally and emotionally
- into the painting, from a realistically presented foreground to a background. Spatial
and planar ambiguities occur in many of your paintings and result in vibrant spatial
tensions. Although the round bodily forms in A Greek Goddess up to no Good (2013),
have a three-dimensional quality, the white and red background areas appear flat and
two-dimensional, preventing entry into a conventional background.
Your viewpoints of figures are frequently unexpected and irrational, and most heads
are portrayed with a bold immediacy and an iconic frontality. Torsos tend to fill the
format, while heads, legs, and even arms often disappear beyond the edges of the
format. This is the case in A Greek Goddess up to no Good (2013) and in the nude
Twins (2007) seen from the back. In Warrior and Maidens (2013), four nude bodies
are presented in a row, two facing the onlooker and two turning away. But again, one
head disappears partly beyond the upper edge of the format, while the legs disappear
behind flat planes of grey and green.
Karin How would you describe your style of painting?
Jan Even though I never intentionally express emotions or feelings, I would call my work
figurative-expressionistic. I always use a figurative image which I then distort or
abstract in an expressionistic manner. I have no idea why I distort or abstract, perhaps
subconsciously trying to express an emotion after all! I agree though that there is, in
most of my images a strong vitality and life force, for instance, in Meter Maid (1985)
and Struttin (2009). I hardly ever paint abstract images. Hammer (1970) is a singular
exception.
I am immensely drawn to radically abstracted nudes like Black Nude (2013), Disco
Dancer (2009) and Fallen Angel (2013), possibly because of their emotive power. I
seem to detect an – perhaps subconscious - influence of Goya’s Black Paintings in
these. Colour-wise reduced to black and red, the voluminous black nude and the
fallen angel have an ominous quality, at the same time almost evoking a sinister, bold
landscape.
Karin Global Warming/Skull (2013) includes several images which are faintly evocative of a
sinister landscape at the top of the composition. Depicted are what might be trees
surrounded by grey clouds polluting the landscape. Below the landscape, in another
section of the composition, can be seen a boulder-like figure and a dark skull, wearing
a gas mask. I consider this as one of only a few really ominous and threatening
images, commenting directly on environmental issues.
Through Robert Hodgins, I am sure, you became acquainted with the work of artists
like Daumier, Francis Bacon, George Grosz and others, all of whom inspired him also.
Two Heads (2009), a present you gave Rob, shows distinct similarities with the work of
Francis Bacon, although the image does not appear nearly as tormented as Bacon’s
works are. The severe distortion of the two heads and their dark colourful painterliness
do, however, resemble Bacon quite strongly.
Others like Demagogue (2009) and Crime is dragging down the economy (2013) faintly
recall the work of Daumier. But whereas you are more inclined to paint, tongue in
cheek, the prototype of a Professor (2001); a typical Chairman (2008), a Demagogue
(2009), a Syndicate Chief (2013) or a Drug Lord (2004), your work, on the whole, lacks
Daumier’s social and political satire and sarcasm. In works like Streetwise (2004)
and Drug Lord (2004) though, there is a sinister undertone and you have consciously
attempted to comment on street kids and the drug scene in general.
Jan It is true that in my paintings I rarely commented directly on social and political issues,
but was nevertheless always acutely aware of issues like corruption, the drug scene
and those forces which destroy nature and the environment.
Karin How did Rob, as an individual, inspire you? And how does his work influence you?
Several people have criticised you for painting very much like Rob. How would you
respond to such criticism?
Nudes Rollerskating 2008
R.G.H. 4 2007
Old Seaman 2009
Demagogue 2009
Two Heads 2009
Prof 2001
Untitled 2006
Untitled (Male Figure) 1978
Untitled (Red Tie) 2001
Hammer 1970
Untitled (Female Figures) 1978
Jan I can’t really answer this, but I have total belief and conviction in what Rob said and
what he taught me in art. He was my mentor and muse from the word go. Later I
developed an incredible kindred spirit with Rob. I found that I had much in common
with him in music and art, guffy novels4 and even serious literature. And yes, I was
strongly influenced by his art, although I never copied his style. I was also hardly
ever quite as inspired as he was with literary source material. Interestingly, he said
so himself. I suppose the ugly faces of his tyrants and businessmen are, in fact,
comparable with the ugly faces of my own drug lords and politicians.
Karin Works like Old Seaman (2009) and Informer (2009) I would describe as more topical
and immediate. An image like Holy Shit – Envy (2013) illustrates, in a humorous and
satirical way, one of the seven deadly sins. This work, as well as Domestics (2007)
and Marriage of Convenience (2008) distinctly bring to mind the work of George
Grosz. But whereas Grosz’s caricatures in particular, were bitingly satirical, your
images are usually more humorous and humane. They are never quite vicious or
aggressive, and I even detect an element of caricature in some of them.
They may, on the whole, not appear aggressive, but they do, at times, reflect a dark
undercurrent. In this regard they probably resemble Robert Hodgin’s Ubu paintings,
for instance, Central Africa? East Africa? 5 and South Africa 197?-Interrogator 6 .
What were some of the creative devices Rob taught you?
Jan Apart from painting techniques and processes we shared, Rob always told me: “Use
the accidents and mistakes you make in your work” - and when I followed his advice, I
found that my painting improved and gained vitality. Rob also advised me: Exploit the
irrational and unexpected in your work and develop it. If it works, leave it. It adds to
the mystery of the work.” I liked and understood what he said.
The pictorial irrationalities and ambiguities are thoroughly exploited in some of the
Calendar Girl (2009) series. These were painted from images that I cut out from
magazines. In Calendar Girl 2 (2009) the girl is depicted, hugging herself with her
two arms, while a third hand appears – quite unexpectedly – on her naked hip. In the
original magazine image, the third hand belongs to a man standing behind the girl.
I deleted the image of the man and cut out the image of the girl, leaving the man’s
hand on her hip, thereby creating a kind of collage. In Two Nudes with Floating Heads
(2013) an abstracted arm floats next to the voluptuous torso on the left. Meter Maid
(1985), for instance, is another strong example of my love for an almost irrational
assemblage of body parts, displaced, cut off and floating. The bright colourfulness of
this work, its lively rhythm and lush painterliness, add to the vitality of the image.
From Rob I also learned to be more experimental and to watch and make use of
spontaneous marks and accidents. He believed that subconsciously an artist intends
accidents, and advised me to always go with the unexpected and unpredictable
result. In works like Nudes passing through landscape (1970) and Maiden strolling
through landscape (2008) accidental brush strokes and the odd dab of paint, I feel,
contribute to the mysterious quality of the images. Similarly, in some of the still lifes,
such as Still Life (2008) accidental mishaps have definitely contributed towards the
rich and sensuous quality of the painting. The inverted or distorted perspectives of
the tables in my still lifes derive from an intuitive and an almost haphazard approach
to the composition.
Like Rob I also liked titling my images only after having completed them. Rob believed
that the mistake a lot of artists make is painting towards a title. They labour too much
to conform to what the title means. In doing so, they tend to neglect the quality of
the finished work – it ends up looking overdone and too self-conscious. In works like
Lady Gaga (2013), for instance, as in all my other images, I had completed the image
before I titled it.
7
Karin In this interview we are concentrating on your painting, drawing and sculpture , so we
shall have a closer look at some of your works on the three collaborative exhibitions
you have held with Robert Hodgins at the Lidchi -; the Goodman-; and the Market
Gallery; as well as your major solo shows at Erdmann Contemporary and Obert
Contemporary.
Did the 1970 exhibition at the Lidchi Gallery which was then run by Harold Jeppe,
have a theme?
Jan No, I don’t think there was a title, but in the oil paintings we showed, Robert Hodgins
and I explored the concept of serialisation, conveying movement of an idea or a
figure/s, sequentially, from one frame to another. We were, at the time, both inspired
by the brilliant and eccentric 19th century photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, who
sequentially captured human and animal movement which is almost imperceptible to
the human eye. He was fascinated by the human form in movement, within fractions
of a second. Robert and I worked out sequential ideas for our paintings, each in our
own way.
In Man Walking Front (1970), Man Walking Side (1970) and Woman Turning (1970), for
instance, I have depicted the male and the female figure in different postures, evoking
forward or sideward movement. Woman climbing into and out of a Hammock (1970)
was directly inspired by an image by Muybridge 8. Different motions by one or more
figures have been depicted within mostly horizontal compositions, which emphasise
forward movement. Even spiralling movements are shown, as in Dancing Women
(2009).
Karin The theme of movement and inner motion seems to have intrigued you, even though
you did not consciously attempt to depict inner motion or emotion. Images such
as Nude Walking through Landscape (2013), with its Wenning-like landscape in the
background, is much more realistic, earthy and picturesque than the serialised almost
automated Muybridge figures. Nudes Roller Skating (2008) and Dancing Women
(2009), for instance, have been slightly abstracted, and movement is evoked by
displaced limbs and by blurred and overlapping layers of paint.
Wilhelm van Rensburg has written about your graphic work in his essay entitled, Young Men in Garage Trousers.
The Human Figure in Motion. Eadweard Muybridge. 1955. Dover Publications Inc., New York, plate 174
4
7
5
8
Robert Hodgins’ word for engaging but slightly shallow novels
1960’s from Ubu Centenaire: Histoire d’un Farceur Criminel 6. 1996. A Lasting Impression: The Robert Hodgins Print
Archive, Wits Art Museum, 2012, p.184
From Ubu Centenaire : Histoire d’un Farceur Criminal? 1996. op.cit., p 272
6
The brushwork in most of your paintings is vigorous and the colours you use,
although reduced in range, are strong and luscious. Are you sure that you are not
trying to express emotion or inner motion in your work? Demagogue (2009) depicting
a coarse-looking man with raised fists, speaking through a microphone, is definitely
most expressive and emotive, as is Crime is dragging down the Economy (2013).
While creating metaphors for certain concepts such as greed, corruption, political
power, you are also expressing these notions through very bold and expressive
gestures and gesticulation.
Jan What fascinates me is physical movement. I am visually very alert and aware of
people’s habits and movements – perhaps motion and emotion are automatically
contained within the movements I depict.
Karin Tell me about the 1975 Goodman Gallery show. Was there a theme?
Jan Not as far as I remember. I painted for this show, when I was staying with Rob in
Westdene. Both Rob and I depicted the human form. In my works I used strong
colours. Otherwise I don’t remember much about this exhibition except that Linda
Givon, when seeing the works on the wall, exclaimed: “How on earth am I going to
sell these?” 9
Karin Interestingly, the 1978 Market Theatre Gallery exhibition included not only paintings,
but also some of your sculptures and drawings.
Warrior and Maidens 2013
Jan At the time I was very much influenced by the work of the sculptor, Jean Robert
Ipoustéguy 10, who constructed some of his sculptures in sections, to be reassembled
later at the venue where it was set up. I was inspired by this assembled look, and
made plaster casts of human figures. The body parts of different figures were
assembled and reassembled and eventually did not resemble the original body cast
at all. I transformed the casts entirely and suspended them from the ceiling with
wire. Thus they hovered above the gallery space. The plaster fragments were rough,
untreated and unpainted. They were later smoothed down with sand paper. Some of
the sculptures expressed movement, such as the life-size walking male nude Untitled
(1978), and another gesticulating, marching male figure which is half in action and half
in repose. I was, at the time, also very much inspired by Henry Moore’s works and
Frank Gallo’s sculptures cast in resin.
From this exhibition I gave Rob a male head, cast in bronze. Moore’s influence can
possibly be detected in my use of positive and negative spaces in the work. We called
this head Benito, because it made us think of the arrogance of Benito Mussolini!
I have never made sculptures again after this exhibition.
Karin What about the drawings, which you also exhibited only once?
Jan They were mostly drawings of female nudes, executed in pencil and conté. Some
Informer 2009
Unfortunately, the Goodman Gallery could not help us with this exhibition either.
10
Born Jean Robert, in Dun-sur-Meuse on 6 January 1929, the artist later added his mother’s name to his own,
Ipoustéguy. He died in 2006. Ipoustéguy’s work was most varied, but he is known mostly as a sculptor
9
Calendar Girl 2 2009
Hodgins opening at Goodman (David and Ulrich) 2012/13
Lady Gaga 2012/13
Holy Shit - Envy 2012/13
Amazon 2007
Flowers and Fruit 2006
Drug Lord 2007
A Greek Goddess up to no Good 2012/13
Struttin 2009
are depicted fairly realistically, standing or static, while others are seen in motion,
and might have been sketches for some of the paintings exploring movement. The
sketches were made after Muybridge’s photographs.
Karin
Jan
Your 2008 exhibition at Erdmann Contemporary in Cape Town was entitled Uncle Six
Fingers, and was a mixed bag of paintings, as you have described them.
Yes, the title was inspired by a record with comedians Mike Nichols and Elaine May.
It was an ad-lib take on a conversation between father and daughter. Black comedy,
kind-of, because tragically, the father tried to explain to his daughter that he was
going to prison – yet again – as a result of an argument between himself and Uncle Six
Fingers. Uncle Six Fingers being one of the rogues portrayed in my paintings.
Again the images for this exhibition are very figurative and painted in acrylic on board.
The main theme was the nude walking through a landscape – resembling a bit the
Lidchi exhibition images dealing with serialism.
Unlike Robert, whose paintings very often were absolute figments of his imagination,
my work is based on images I see, and which I paint and adapt as my subconscious
dictates. While you might imagine looking at a drug lord, he could be a politician. You
might think that I am lamenting the state of politics in this country or commenting on
corruption! But I don’t like to give a definite interpretation to my works and to dictate
to viewers what my work is saying. I like people to interpret it as they will and if, at face
value, they appreciate it and it reflects something important to them, then I am content
Karin
Thank you, Jan, for your candid and inspiring input into this conversation. Although
I have known you for more than forty years, I have learned so much more about you
and your work during these past months. Our friendship came about through Rob,
and the bond between the three of us has, through this conversation been forged
even more strongly.
Having known Rob I believe that he may have wanted me to end this conversation with
the following words from a poem by W.H. Auden:
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love11.
Uncle Six Fingers 2008
Crime is dragging down the Economy 2013
Sailor 1972
Prof Karin Maria Skawran
Drug Lord 2008
Former Head of the Department of History of Art and Fine Arts at the University of South Africa, Pretoria. She was
trained as an art historian at the universities of Pretoria and Munich, Germany.
Chapter Two
Young Men
in Garage Trousers
Wilhelm van Rensburg
Young Men in Garage Trousers
Four decades of printmaking collaboration
between Jan Neethling and Robert Hodgins.
Neethling and Hodgins met at art school and Robert’s tongue-in-cheek
comment about Jan at the time was to enquire what a young man was
doing at College wearing garage trousers - denim jeans - when the dress
code was strictly suit-and-tie for both students and lecturers. This detail
of dress indicated something of the irreverent attitude towards convention
that became the hallmark of both artists throughout their artistic careers.
Their irreverent attitude, captured in the phrase young men in garage
trousers, evokes the slice-of-life ethnographies typical of social science
research in America of the late 1950s and early 1960s. This generation of
ethnographic researchers gave a voice to society’s underclass, drawing
on the canonical text, boys in white: Student culture in medical school
in which the author records the transition in young, predominantly male
medical practitioners from student life to internship at medical hospitals.
These young researchers were cultural romantics, valorizing mainstream
society’s villains and outsiders as heroes. They imagined society through
a tragic shade, but at the same time believed in the emancipatory value of
deviating from conventions. Neethling and Hodgins were like these young
men personified in the rather conservative South African art scene. Their
emergence as a collaborative artistic force was as impertinent as Jan’s
arrival at College in denim jeans. Their innovation in the field of printmaking
in South Africa transgressed the rigorous stylistic and formal codes that
were associated with the medium at the time.
Jan and Robert’s imagery in printmaking can be positioned in the figurative
tradition of European post-war Expressionism, represented by the work
of such artists as Francis Bacon and Jean Dubuffet. An extant monotype
Neethling pulled at College is a good example of his emerging skill as
printmaker and an indication of his favored subject matter, the female nude
that became ubiquitous in Neethling’s work throughout his life. The nude,
male and female, was also one of the earliest subject matter in Hodgins’
art. Their work at the time drew on the iconography of British pop artists
such as Richard Hamilton and Peter Blake. Hamilton’s famous collage,
Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?,
for example, was described by Lawrence Alloway (who is credited for
inventing the term Pop Art) as an inventory of popular culture: muscle men,
nude girls and Jazz singers among other things, inhabiting symbol-thick
spaces full of television sets and vacuum cleaners, criss-crossed with the
tracks of human activity. Neethling and Hodgins’ multilayered prints are, in
similar ways, collages of human activity.
Neethling and Hodgins’s first endeavours in printmaking as a collaborative
team in 1971, exhibit an assuredly classical figurative style (drawing on
figurative studies of the nude that has been an integral part of the visual
repertoire of many such British pop artists as Allen Jones and R.B. Kitaj,
and New York pop artists such as Tom Wesselmann and Mel Ramos.
Hodgins’ prints utilized classical figures, in Greek kouros mode, while
Neethling’s series, Bikini Girl I, II & III is a perfect foil for the iconic nudes of
these Pop artists.
Equally innovative as these two artists’ iconography was the printmaking
technique of cliché verre that Jan and Robert employed as early as 1971,
resulting in a two-person exhibition at the Lidchi Gallery in Johannesburg,
their first collaborative show. At the time, screen printing was favoured in
South Africa, probably as a reflection of the growing status of printmaking
internationally. The printmaking studios of Egon Guenther and Fred
Schimmel can be mentioned in this regard. Neethling and Hodgins chose
cliché verre, a printmaking technique that utilizes glass, instead of say,
a lithographic stone, copper plate, or piece of linoleum as matrix. This
Stockings I 1975
technique entails drawing a design/image on a sheet of glass and placing
it on top of a piece of sensitized photographic paper, and then exposing
it to the direct sun. The glass is usually covered with an opaque ground
and the design/image is drawn with a sharp instrument, resulting in fine,
exposed lines through which the sun will burn the lines on the paper,
resembling an etching. These glass prints were frequently produced in
the 1850s by etchers such as Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, CharlesFrancois Daubigny, Jean Francois Millet and Theodore Rouseau. Even
Eugene Delacroix preferred cliché verre to lithography in his early career
in the early 19th century. The inspiration of the School of Barbizon and its
preoccupation with depictions of the Fountainbleau Forest is evident in
many of the cliché verre landscapes of Jan Neethling.
In 1980 Jan and Robert mounted their second printmaking collaboration
exhibition at the Market Theatre Gallery, Johannesburg. Their printmaking
experiments centred on a series of monotypes and one-off screen prints.
The subject matter of these prints shifted dramatically, from classic figures
and landscapes, to portraits of one very notorious American 1930s
Depression era gangster, Charles Arthur Floyd, better known as Pretty Boy
Floyd (a villain of note, who, in spite of numerous murders was well liked
Untitled 1960
Stockings II 1975
by the American public, as a Robin Hood figure. He was later declared
America’s Public Enemy No. 1 by J Edgar Hoover). The artists found
a newspaper article and photograph of this villain and used this image
over the Easter weekend of that year as basis for numerous explorations
of visual possibilities using a silkscreen technique and mixed media to
embellish this image.
Their Pretty Boy Floyd exhibition subtly referenced the controversial 1964
Andy Warhol exhibition Thirteen Most Wanted Men momentarily installed
on the façade of the State Pavilion at the World’s Fair in New York of the
most dangerous criminals of the time. They had to be summarily covered
up soon after its opening. Warhol succeeded in valorizing the underdog, in
the same manner as those ethnographic researchers did for the working
class. In the same manner Neethling and Hodgins also valorized the
villain by the forthright gaze of their Pretty Boy Floyd Portraits. The title
of Neethling and Hodgins’s exhibition also seems to echo the double
entendre regarding same sex desire invoked by Warhol’s Thirteen Most
Wanted Men, but inadvertently perhaps.
Twenty-one years after Pretty Boy Floyd, Neethling and Hodgins recreated
the experience that started their collaboration of 1980, again over Easter,
this time using photographs of each other. They used four photographs as
basic images to create a series of portraits of each other, themselves, and
of the two of them together. Their previous two-person show was based
on an image of a criminal, Charles Arthur Floyd. In this exhibition at Gallery
Art on Paper in 2001 and titled One-Off, Hodgins quipped at the time:
“You have two criminals to contend with.” The result was not unlike that of
the collaboration between Gilbert and George, but unlike these two living
sculptures Neethling and Hodgins rejected the formality and respectability
of these two suits of the arts, Gilbert and George’s pseudonym, and
donned the more daring attire of the urban hip hop cowboy. Neethling
pulled a particularly striking cowboy self-portrait for this exhibition,
depicting a confident, charming and handsome young man, again, still
wearing garage trousers!
The title of the 2001 exhibition, One-Off has an interesting origin. The
silkscreen process Jan and Robert used proved to be quite cumbersome.
Said Robert: “The trouble with silkscreen is that it’s a terribly dead, inPretty Boy Floyd 1980
your-face medium. I’ve never quite managed to crack it. Jan and I were
going to do an edition, but after about three prints, I said bugger that for
a lark – they are so boring. So we decided to make each one different,
hence the title One-Off.”
Their next exhibition, also at Gallery Art on Paper, in 2005, was titled Two
weeks in the Country. It referred to the time spent with master printer Mark
Atwood at his studio The Artists’ Press in its idyllic setting near White
River, Mpumalanga - where the prints were produced. Neethling made
extensive use of a polymer photogravure technique - the prints of which
Punk 2006
he hand coloured. The titles of this series are significant: Baldy, Ol ‘con,
Prof (2005), and so on, because they constitute a veritable rogue’s gallery
of outsiders and eccentrics. Neethling was not interested in portraying
any likeliness of a specific sitter, if there was any model at all. He seems to
be creating a similar attitude in these portraits than, say, the earlier urban
cowboy self-portrait.
Of their working relationship and of the prints they produced until Robert’s
death in 2010, Hodgins once said: “Jan’s are very pop and jubilated;
mine are more Dr Jekyll and Mr Hodgins.” Jan Neethling’s are indeed very
assured and accomplished, signaling an ironic frame of mind in terms of
his subject matter, and an innovative experimental stance to conventional
printmaking techniques.
Jan No.9 2001
Wilhelm van Rensburg
Research Fellow VIAD (Visual Identities in Art and Design) research centre, FADA (Faculty of Art,
Design and Architecture), UJ (University of Johannesburg).
Torso I 1971
Chapter Three
Disarmingly
Honest Observer
Neil Dundas
Jan Neethling’s surprisingly animated figures dominate his canvases. He is an
accomplished painter of life on the move, and even the occasional landscape
or still-life he produces will seem as much concerned with the human absence,
as they might with a table leg, objects in a room, trees or the lie of the land.
They display the same brushstroke and sense of living presence that we see in
the figurative pictures.
It has always seemed to me that he has been distinguished by two
characteristics in his approach to image-making: he is a wide-eyed and
impressionable recorder of human activity, but also a skilled and formal
technician, hardworking and disciplined in his approach to his materials and
subjects.
Neethling grew up in a close and cultured family. Due to his father’s diplomatic
career he learned early to observe and react to a new green land when they
lived in Canada in the first few years following World War II. He cites this
exposure at an impressionable young age as fostering his first wanting to
draw and paint, and he later excelled in art at school back in South Africa.
His high school and arts college education encouraged the figurative element
of his work and instilled the discipline ways of the period: specialist teachers
taught different media, it was required to learn a solid foundation in each, as
well as develop rigorous standards in the preparation of materials, surfaces,
and the techniques required before evolving a personal style. He acquired
skills not only in painting, sculpture and drawing but also in graphic processes
including silkscreen, then very much a new way of working. He made
acquaintance who provided access to a social context of arts, literature and
music, and also developed his interest in photography. All this provided the
basis for experimenting with combinations of medium, becoming open to new
processes, and being willing to use his own photographs, and the images of
popular culture, as the basis for his paintings.
While he has painted and exhibited since the 1970’s, this was mainly in
collaboration with, or alongside his lifelong friend and mentor, the late Robert
Hodgins, and only in more recent years has Neethling painted regularly, and
exhibited consistently for himself. I believe I am one among many who believe
this career was long overdue for a steeper trajectory. Long self-effacing and
modest in promoting his own work, he has frequently been seen as selfsacrificing in his stalwart support for Hodgins’ career.
Yet the artist himself sees the long development as having been necessary,
a steady evolution of his main cast of characters in what we like to call his
“theatre of life.” It is true that he and Hodgins actually inspired one another, and
that each learned from the other as their years of working together went by. He
ventures that he has only recently found and exercised his own artistic voice but
that this was always strongly encouraged by Hodgins.
I believe that few really know to what extent Jan Neethling influenced Hodgins,
mostly assuming the process was more one-way. In fact, I have for many
years known him to be Robert’s most trusted sounding board, adviser, and
respected critic, just as the reverse was true of Hodgins for his own work.
Neethling credits Hodgins with inspiring him to leave the commercial graphics
and advertising world for the fine arts in the 1960’s, also with helping him
through what he has termed his “drought period” of the 1990’s and pushing
him to be more productive, develop his confidence, and trust in the abilities he
had honed for so long.
Jan truly began to reclaim a solo approach to his painting in the 2000’s. The
archive of his images shows that all the groundwork was there over many
years. He revisited his early luscious female nudes, returned to further explore
the depiction of figures in movement through interiors and landscapes, which
he and Hodgins had experimented with from images of early photography
and film.
From this time onward he is evidently fully confident of his own expressive,
graphically edged and Pop-inflected imagery. Stylized lines and dramatic
colours suggest a theatrical take on his motifs of interest. The ambiguous
figures seem to take on curious combinations of admiration and fearful
fascination, of threat and warmth. Like Hodgins, but distinct from that influence,
he reveals himself to be unafraid of sudden shifts in palette, or experiments
with medium. He will play with spraypaint, text and stencils, hard lines
which simulate cut-and-paste, bright - even violent - colour juxtaposed with
monochromatic flat shapes and photographic elements and borrowings from
mass media. He uses graphics in unusual ways, and in series which are bursts
of production (see the long series of photogravure works each time he works
together with Mark Attwood of the Artists’ Press). Largely he has focused on
painting, but his own camera is always with him, and his photography often
informs his content.
Syndicate Chief 2013
Neethling has remained concerned with the human figure as a subject which
can reveal “the good, the wicked, the lovely and the ugly” in one work. His
chosen subjects are seldom young, but rather appear caught unwittingly on
camera, in harsh flashlight, revealing the wear and tear of lives lived at full
throttle. Some are seen with tolerance and sympathy, but acknowledge their
frailties, some with amusement as just a little wicked; but many more as a
collective of evil, menace and latent violence.
Hodgins commented that while he would seek to achieve a “translucent
ground, gradual and transparent layering, screens of smokiness, darkness or
even veils of fabric in which to seat the deeds of the dastardly”, he saw Jan
always as “tougher in his approach, direct, he does not try to soften the dark
side of his characters. Neethling is always tougher than me, more keen to
show the brutal. Jan likes the harder, expressionist edge of the graphic in his
paintings. He takes a no-mucking-about attitude to thugs and seductresses
alike. What you see is what you get, old boy!” 1
The paintings emerged strong and glowing. Building from the drawings at the
Market Theatre exhibiton of 1978, there is a clear line of development to the
Greek Goddess up to No Good of 2013 at Erdmann Contemporary. Neethling’s
female nudes are always fleshy, impudent and confident in a voluptuous
sensuality which is paralleled in the use of colour and painted gesture. They
are strong figures, dominant actors in the scenes they inhabit, even when
they flit, surprisingly lightly, across rooms or pastoral landscapes in motion
reminiscent of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (1912). He steadily
Untitled 1972
shakes off the attitude of an innocent abroad in the 60’s, influenced by Tom
Wesselman or Richard Lindner. His female figures do owe allegiance to that
emerging permissiveness of the Pop era, commercial images from album
covers, magazine shoots, page three girls in the tabloids, advertising hoardings;
but he tempers the sense of admiring the model in life-drawing class with frank
desire, an open understanding and appreciation of the nude body. This is the
honest Neethling, as his treatment of the subject moves further from being
homage to the masters he studied, such as Bonnard, Degas, or Bacon. While
Large Yellow Nude (circa 1960), painted while at art school, is monumental
and powerful, the painting is also variously derivative of the styles of Rouault,
de Kooning and even Hodgins at that time. Ten years later the works Woman
Bending, Woman Turning and Women Climbing into and out of Hammock
(1970) show the artist breaking away, and seeking the difference in revealing
the female nude which comes to distinguish his own voice.
It is our first encounter with the disarmingly honest observer. These are almost
confessional paintings, still careful in brushwork and pursuing his style, but
what is most striking is the feeling revealed for the subject. These figures grow
Robert Hodgins in an informal interview with the writer at Neethling’s studio on a Sunday afternoon prior to
1
their two man show Two Weeks in the Country at Art on Paper, 2005
Fallen Angel 2013
over time and other works to be more attainable, more human, and are lustily
appreciated. Less idealized than some of the early nudes, the later female
figures are seen through the eyes of an experienced observer.
They persist to this day, and gradually are added to with an element of humour,
and a gentler edge [as in the aforementioned Greek Goddess up to No Good
(2013)], and sometimes a touch of satire and disillusionment. Neethling
frequently matches the medium, background treatment and particular style of
line to the specific lady of interest.
Sadly rare are his sculptures: the bronze head Neethling gifted to Hodgins after
their joint exhibition at the Market Theatre in 1978 has always impressed. It is
a tough but grand and noble head of a power figure. Masculine, reduced to
spare lines, but full of heft and purpose, it conveys a sense of the loneliness
of the mighty. On this only exhibition in which he showed sculpture there were
also two plaster figures, a striding man, and a headless dancing man. They are
very distinct in their attitude to the body from the paintings then and now, and
capture strength in motion and vitality. I have often hoped these will not be the
last foray into three dimensions.
“Something wistful, longing for what might have been” is the reaction I
Cop 2005
Ol’ con 2005
expressed to the artist when I saw the etching Years Ago (2005). It reflects the
tender acceptance of an aging beauty. She is on a soft ground, pale colour
washed on to the photogravure surface. This type of depiction is in contrast
to Strutting (2004), or the Calendar Girls (2009) series of paintings which
present the power of femmes fatales in bold areas of strident colour. The same
observer is here wiser, but no less frank with the viewer. He openly shows
the pangs of loss of innocence that these temptresses represent, but is more
technically confident and able to wield the realization of cynicism in exposing
them. Even the titles begin to show the openness about character: see
Dumpling Nudes (2009), and Dubious Marriage (2009), of the same year.
The male figures we see by the 2000’s have also revealed their tough
characters, yet always seem more archetypes than the more specific
personalities of the female figures. I think of Damon Runyon’s writing, and
the popular movie images of Prohibition-era gangsters when I look at what
Neethling calls his “rogues’ gallery”. There is an etching by that name from the
2005 series, which looks back to the Bodybuilders (1971), and a painting of a
man in a striped shirt from 1972. From the beginning, the men in Neethling’s
images are harsher, heavier in atmosphere and intent. This persists to the
recent politicians and thugs, but again often tempered with more sympathy
Prof 2005
Rogues gallery 2005
and humour, as are the females. The current rogues are sinister, but have also
evolved. They still are made with that hard graphic line in black paint, embody
evil and warnings of danger which deal with serious problems of the day: drug
dealing, criminal corruption in the echelons of power and the threat of violence
in the street. Yet there is a dose of satire, and a feeling that these characters are
also more honestly understood. Bold strokes and stripes of colour, heavy, dark
delineation of gross bodies make very strong paintings. There is always a latent
threat embodied in these figures. Overweening pride, arrogance, corruptibility
and brutish nature are revealed in works like Drug Lord (2007), Street Wise
(2007/08), and Arm Wrestling (2008). We recognize, (or do we?) politicians,
ne’er-do-wells, gangsters and criminals, half-remembered from the television
news, or old newspaper accounts, but they are types, representative of a whole
group of men. They remain deliberately nameless, or generically titled such as
Politician (2004). It is true that exceptions should be named, where a particular
person is rendered as a true portrait.
The Pretty Boy Floyd works are an early example of treating a specific male
subject. There are also portraits of Hodgins, self-portraits and a notable 2013
depiction of rock star Mick Jagger. Titled Good Knight Mick Jagger (2012/13),
the picture wears that knighthood with a scowl. It is a face too well lived-in to
Untitled (Benito) 1969/70
escape the irony of the title.
Those deliberate portraits do, however, demonstrate some affection or
understanding acceptance of the subject, even though the common thread is
that in all these men, there lurks a rogue. They are sometimes accorded the
treatment we see in the female characters, a little caricature, softer lines in
drawing their features, a more humane expression. The photopolymer etching
Lust (2005) is as honest and cheeky about the memory of desire as the work
Years Ago ( 2005). This old fellow has no illusions, but good memories of what
once was, and just like other rogues is not to be trusted! Performance I and
Performance II and the Ultimate Chairman from 2008’s exhibition Uncle Six
Fingers at the Erdmann Contemporary are also inspired by real life characters
such as Sir Ian McKellen, and a tycoon who best remains unnamed. Naggingly
almost recognizable, they are still mainly concerned with the depiction of a
type of man with talent and power, who might disguise the true intent of the
roles he plays.
Jan Neethling has hit his stride as a painter over this past decade. Assertive
gestures, and new life inform the work. Keenly observed men and women
people his pictures with great presence, generally darker beneath their surfaces
than first we imagine. The team of Nudes Roller Skating (2008) are formidable
Untitled 1958/60
though comic. The Demagogue (2009) is absurd yet dangerous, the trapped
figures in Ice Bound (2009) are disarmed but barely conceal frustration and
fury. Eight Skulls (2012) are damaged, grimacing, displayed on trophy shelves.
No reliquary this, these are the debris of unfettered violence. This is dramatic
theatre, life in all its rudeness on vigorous display, and painted with empathy
and a critical eye.
In this period, the two friends also returned to collaborating, equals in a process
which allowed each to explore their strengths. Graphics such as Rob, silkscreen
(2011) , A Bit Sentimental, Gossip and Ol’ Codger with Hostess (all 2006),
admit a more light hearted take on this theatre of life. Neethling and Hodgins
take evident pleasure in their portraits of one another, and their self-portraits.
The collaborative Rob and Jan, (2001) photogravure has them confronting the
viewer, determined, intent, a little grim but faintly amused... much like the way in
which I think the disarmingly honest observer regards us all.
Eight Skulls 2012
Swimsuit Girl with Floating Head 2012/13
Neil Dundas
Senoir Curator, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
The Reprimand 2009
Three Maidens 2009
Old Body Builder 2009
Head 2009
Scrutiny 2007
Politician 2004
Body Builder 1971
Chapter Four
Exhibitions list
1970
Lidchi Gallery: Johannesburg
2008 Erdmann Contemporary: Cape Town
Two person exhibition with Robert Hodgins
Uncle Six Fingers - solo exhibition
1971 Lidchi Gallery: Johannesburg
2008 Carol Lee Fine Art: Melville Johannesburg
Two person exhibition (graphics - cliché verre) with Robert Hodgins
Group exhibition – various artists (painting)
1975
Goodman Gallery: Johannesburg
2009
Obert Contemporary: Johannesburg
Two person exhibition (painting) with Robert Hodgins
Seventies Onwards – solo exhibition
1978
Market Gallery: Johannesburg
2009
Carol Lee Fine Art: Melville Johannesburg
Two person exhibition (sculptures and drawings) with Robert Hodgins
Group exhibition – various artists (painting)
1980
Market Gallery: Johannesburg
2009
Erdmann Contemporary: Cape Town
Pretty Boy Floyd - two person exhibition (graphics) with Rob Hodgins
Fifty...Sixty...Seventy...Eighty...Ninety...RIP - group exhibition
1984
Market Gallery: Johannesburg
2010
Carol Lee Fine Art: Johannesburg
Group exhibition with Robert Hodgins, Deborah Bell, Paul Stopforth,
Group exhibition – various artists (painting)
William Kentridge, Frank van Schaik and Joachim Schonfeldt
2010
Erdmann Contemporary: Cape Town
2001
Art On Paper: Melville Johannesburg
Recent and New Works - group exhibition
Two person exhibition (graphics - one-off silk-screens) with Robert Hodgins
2011
Art On Paper: 44 Stanley Road, Johannesburg
2001
Carol Lee Fine Art: Melville Johannesburg
Thirty Five Years Of Graphics - Robert Hodgins, Jan Neethling &
Group exhibition – various artists (painting)
Sam Nthlengethwa
2002
Carol Lee Fine Art: Melville Johannesburg
2011
Carol Lee Fine Art: Johannesburg
Group exhibition – various artists (painting)
Group exhibition – various artists (painting)
2003
Carol Lee Fine Art: Melville Johannesburg
2011
Erdmann Contemporary: Cape Town
Group exhibition – various artists (painting)
Present History II - group exhibition – various artists
2004
Carol Lee Fine Art: Melville Johannesburg
2012
Carol Lee Fine Art: Johannesburg
Group exhibition – various artists (painting)
Group exhibition various artists (painting)
2005 Art on Paper: Melville Johannesburg
2013
North-West University Gallery: Potchefstroom
Two weeks in the country - two person exhibition with Robert Hodgins
A Drawn Conclusion - group exhibition - various artists
2006
Carol Lee Fine Art: Melville Johannesburg
2013
Erdmann Contemporary: Cape Town
Group exhibition – various artists (painting)
A Re-Drawn Conclusion - group exhibition - various artists
2006
Art On Paper: Melville, Johannesburg
2013
Carol Lee Fine Art: Johannesburg
Young Men In Garage Trousers - two person exhibition with
Group exhibition various artists (painting)
Robert Hodgins
2013
Erdmann Contemporary: Cape Town
2007
Carol Lee Fine Art: Melville Johannesburg
A Greek Goddess up to no Good - solo exhibition
Group exhibition – various artists (painting)
2008
SMAC Gallery: Stellenbosch
Group exhibition (painting)
Chapter Five
Acknowledgements
Heidi Erdmann
Gallery Director and Curator
Jan Neethling, Karin Skawran, Wilhelm van Rensburg, Neil Dundas, Jan Coetzee, Sarah Ballam,
Carsten Rasch, Tammin Barker, Anthea Taylor, Rafael Powell and Clairize Malan.
Thank you to Unisa Art Gallery, Carol Lee, Michael Obert, Grizelda Hall and all the
collectors who assisted with the picture research for this book.
Jan Neethling
Robert Hodgins - my life-long friend, mentor, motivator, moral supporter and critic.
Heidi Erdmann - my gallerist who proposed the book, my friend and supporter. Hosted my first and
third solo exhibitions.
Karin Skawran – my dear friend and supporter, contributed an essay in this book.
Alet Vorster and Wilhelm van Rensburg - my friends and supporters. Hosted several joint exhibitions of
Rob and myself at their gallery, Art on Paper. Wilhelm wrote an essay for this book.
Carol Lee - friend and supporter, hosted numerous group exhibitions in which I participated.
Neil Dundas – friend and supporter and contributed an essay for this book.
Jan Coetzee – friend and supporter. He wrote an essay about my last solo
exhibition.
Michael Obert – friend and supporter, who hosted my second solo exhibition.
Mark Attwood – friend and Master Printer – processed and printed my graphics at his studio.
Malcolm Christian – friend and Master Printer - processed and printed my graphics at his studio.
Grizelda Hall – friend and supporter who introduced me to Heidi Erdmann.
Anthony Schmidt – my friend and framer.
Giles Battiss – life-long friend, advisor and supporter.
Sarah Ballam – my friend and supporter, critic and advisor.
David Ballam – my friend who helped with photography.
Theo and Tabita Gerber – my friends and supporters.
My family, Chris, Lois, Tim, Michael and Tony, for moral support and help in various ways, and Tony
again for his help with all the computer work.
Untitled 1981
Thank you to all of those who have supported me by acquiring my work and going to my
exhibitions over the years.
Chapter Six
Directory
I dedicate this book to my
dear friend and mentor
Robert Hodgins
(Jan Neethling)
The book is published by
ERDMANN CONTEMPORARY PTY Ltd
84 Kloof Street, Gardens
8001 Cape Town
Tel: 021 422 2762
[email protected]
www.erdmanncontemporary.co.za
© ERDMANN CONTEMPORARY PTY Ltd
ISBN 978-0-9921730-4-3
First Edition 2014
© Heidi Erdmann (Text) Karin Skawran (Text) Wilhelm van Rensburg (Text) Neil Dundas (Text)
Jan Neethling (Images)
Editor: Heidi Erdmann
Front cover: Jan Neethling, Meter Maid,1985
Book design: Dirk van der Merwe and Heidi Erdmann
Lay-out and reproduction: James Robinson
Printed: Hansa Reproprint CC Cape Town, South Afrika
Photography: Jan Neethling and David Ballam
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the copyright owners.